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Serepta Arrington, 100, looks back on her service during World War II

Serepta Hamilton Arrington is shown, left, with her younger brother, Thomas Hamilton, and twin sister Susan in photos taken during their military service in World War II.

By Amy B. McCraw, Published: April 23, 2023

Serepta Arrington found herself at a crossroads in 1944.

The Henderson County native was 21 years old at the time and had struggled through years of poverty during the Great Depression. She often missed school when the need to just survive outpaced the need for an education. When she did go to school, Arrington, who was a Hamilton before she married, sometimes relied on the generosity of teachers to give her a place to live while she attended classes.

So, by 1944, Arrington was still a junior in high school despite her age. She knew she was technically an adult now, and she needed to decide what to do next.

Then one day, a U.S. Army recruitment poster urging women to join the war effort caught her eye.

“I saw a sign that said, ‘Women wanted for sick and hurt men,’” Arrington said. “I saw the sign, and I went and joined. I didn’t have no place else to go.”

Arrington’s twin sister, Susan, also realized the military might be a good opportunity. But she decided to stay and finish high school before she joined Arrington in the Women’s Army Corps, the women’s branch of the United States Army during World War II.

The sisters ended up serving together, performing clerical duties at an Army medical facility in Mississippi. They were both promoted to the rank of staff sergeant by the time the war ended.

Airplane engines roared overhead

Now 100 years old, Arrington is mostly deaf. She manages to read lips when speakers address her slowly and loudly.

Her daughter, Gleanus Gilliam, said her mother and her Aunt Susan both suffered hearing loss during their time in the military. They were trained at an Army base where male soldiers were being taught to identify both allied and enemy aircraft. The constant roaring of airplane engines led to their hearing impairment, Gilliam said.

Arrington lives with help in her home in Henderson County, though a recent bout with pneumonia landed her in a local rehabilitation center until she regained her strength. Her sister lives in Tennessee.

After she joined the WACs in January of 1944, Arrington underwent training in Ohio and Georgia before she was assigned to Camp Shelby in Mississippi. Her twin sister managed to join her at the Army camp when she completed training.

Located on 134,000 acres near Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Camp Shelby today serves as a military training facility as it did in the 1930s and 1940s.

During the war, the camp also hosted WAC units and included a convalescent hospital and a prisoner of war camp. The POW camp initially housed some German prisoners captured from field marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps.

Arrington and her sister were assigned to the medical facility with Arrington working as a clerk in an office that handled EKGs and metabolism information and her sister performing similar duties in the orthopedic area of the facility.

They often saw the German POWs who also worked around the camp.

“They would say ‘Good morning, Susie and good morning, Susie’s sister,’” Arrington said, adding with a chuckle that the Germans seemed to have trouble pronouncing her name.

She said she enjoyed her time in Mississippi working with her twin sister. They even attended church services in the hospital.

“I had a place to stay and eat and help the men, the hurt men,” Arrington said. “A colonel from New York came down and ran the hospital and I worked in the office with him.”

She described the colonel as a nice man who decided to promote both Arrington and her sister before they were discharged from the military.

“He promoted me from private first class to staff sergeant. Susie came by and he said, ‘I’ll do that for you too,’” Arrington recalled.

Two of 19 children

Arrington and her sister were members of a family with 17 siblings. As they struggled through the Depression, their father at one point took the twins and some of the other younger children out of school. The children and their father traveled on foot to Georgia where they spent the next three years picking cotton just to survive. When the family came back to Henderson County, Arrington and her sister returned to their studies with the help of teachers who took them in.

The twin girls were not the only members of the family to serve during wartime. At least nine of their brothers also joined the military, with some serving during World War I and others serving during World War II. A cousin died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

Arrington earned the American Theater Service Medal, the Good Conduct Medal and the World War II Victory Medal by the time she arrived at Fort Bragg for her discharge from the Army in May of 1946.

She returned home to Henderson County shortly after being discharged and reconnected with Glen Arrington, a boy she knew from school.

Glen had also served in the Army, in Africa and Italy during the war.

   So, when the two former soldiers decided to marry, they chose Veterans Day, Nov. 11, 1947, for their wedding day. Glen passed away in 1995.

“I still take her out on their anniversary,” Gilliam said.

   The twins celebrated their 100^th birthdays together in Newport, Tenn., in December.

A few years ago, Gilliam took her mother to visit the bases where she served and was trained during WWII.

Although Arrington seldom reflects on the war years — saying “that’s over with” — she’s proud that she acted when she read that war poster 79 years ago.

“I felt like I was there for a reason and I did a good job,” she said.